Okay, here is a hard one to learn; we can’t change others but we can change ourselves. Why do I say it is hard? Because we are so attached to proving either our truth, intent or fairness, that we keep coming up with different ways to make our point even if every attempt only brings us frustration and disappointments.

There is nothing wrong with trying to communicate our thoughts and feelings but what becomes a waste is when it is obvious that the recipient is not ready or doesn’t want to see things in a different way. They are stuck in their position and methodology and they are not going to change no matter what we do.

“Funeral” is a new TV commercial launched by the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports (MCYS) in Singapore which looks at relationships in a different light, through a woman at her husband’s funeral. Yasmin Ahmad is the writer and this is her last and latest work.

A friend of mine forwarded to me a couple of days ago, an email from her new girlfriend. In this email her new friend listed ten things they had in common. My friend wanted to share the email with me because had been pleasantly surprised by her new friend’s disposition to concentrate on the similarities rather than the differences.

I then thought about a friend of mine who is Muslim Turkish and came to the US to learn filmmaking. While here she met a Jewish Turkish man and they fell in love and wanted to get married. Her family threatened to disown her if she married him even though the two of them had so much in common. My friend was forced to make a choice between the man she had fallen in love with and her family. She chose her now husband but she still hurts for the loss of her family. Her story is one of differences where families’ believes were so frail and non-inclusive that they couldn’t tolerate any differences. Read more

It talks about the highs we feel when we are in love and the craving when we are rejected. The article actually states that physiologically being in love is the same as being high on cocaine and so when things end we miss it just like we would the drug.

The study was based on brain scans done of twenty year old men and women. I believe if the study had been done on older people the results would have been somewhat different.

Think back to when you were twenty, if you are at that age this post will be something to remember when you get older, and the world was just opening up to you. Most of us were sexually active and living on our own. Everything was new and full of possibilities. And love as “living happily ever after” and the house with the kids, was now a possibility in our lives. Most of us also looked at our partners as the recipient and the giver of all the love we had and could experience. Love at that age is exciting and full of fantasy.

As we get older and mature, love is still exciting but it also becomes profound and we no longer think someone else can be the end all for our emotional needs.

I believe if we suffer through the end of a relationship, as adults, we realize it is not the end of our lives or possibilities. It is sad but surely we will survive because we now have life experience and we are a whole person on our own.

I remember years ago, when a boyfriend decided to end our relationship and my body actually ached as I dealt with not having him anymore. My pain, I didn’t know at the time, was also a result of a very manipulative relationship. I’m not saying it was consciously but he did enjoy seeing me dependent on him and have my feelings be all over the place.

Love is wonderful and energizing and we should all fully live it when we are in a relationship, and if we are connected to ourselves and keep a check on our expectations, we will be okay if and when it ends.

By Elizabeth Landau

(CNN) — Jim Dailakis still remembers how he stood below his then-girlfriend’s balcony, held up a tape player and blasted a George Michael song that the two of them loved.

But this romantic gesture, reminiscent of John Cusack serenading Ione Skye in “Say Anything” (but before that movie came out), didn’t make his first love stay with him forever. After a 2½-year relationship, he got a letter from her in 1988, saying “thanks for everything; we have to move on.”

“The first month was horrible, because when you break up with someone, it’s like a death, but it’s even worse because the corpse goes on living, just without you,” said Dailakis, 41, an Australian-born comedian in New York.

According to new research, the brutality of loving someone who has rejected you has a biological underpinning. A study published in this month’s issue of Journal of Neurophysiology finds that, for those who have been recently rejected, the brain may treat love as an addiction, craving it in the same way as cocaine…Continued

I have always been a person who has had a talent for adapting to new circumstances. I was born and raised in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, lived in NYC and now live in Los Angeles.

I have left my family behind (when I moved to NYC), a bad relationship (when I left NY) and now in Los Angeles I live as a widow.

When I was growing up, I was an outstanding student and everyone thought I would get to do something that involved mathematics and physics but I ended up getting involved with the arts.

As I struggled through the years to make a living, I often heard how I had wasted my talents in a life that to outsiders seemed to be very hard and without the chances of bringing the success they were sure I would have had if I had followed the scientific path.

I must confess, I too, when life got really hard, thought I had made a mistake and wished I could have gone back in time and done things differently.

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” Jalal ad-Din Rumi

Why are we so self-destructive? Often the answer is fear. Somehow we are afraid of both succeeding and failing in the things we consider important and we turn to aggression and self-destruction as a way of keeping us from truly going after what we desire.

This life dynamics starts early in our development. Think back to when we were kids and we liked the girl in pigtails or the boy with the banged up knees. Most of us pulled the girls’ hair or ignored the boy instead of demonstrating how much we like them for fear of being exposed and rejected.

While that behavior can be cute when we are ten years-old it is destructive when we are adults.

We gain many skills and understandings as we get older like wisdom and self-assurance. But we also loose such qualities as our ability to take risks and expose ourselves and be vulnerable. And that is a pity.

We think twice about pursuing a relationship with someone who we feel passionate about because we are afraid of where our feelings might take us. And even worse, what if it doesn’t work out?

Or we may be paralyzed to pursue work that we really care about because of again “what if it doesn’t work?”

I had dinner with my sister in law last night and we talked about relationships. She said she’s been watching a number of documentaries and the question that was being discussed in them was, are humans really meant to be monogamous.

I told her I didn’t know the answer to that but what I did know is that in relationships you are always making choices and decisions.

I talked about Chris. When I got together with him I knew we would be together until one of us died. I didn’t know it was going to happen so fast. Both Chris and I had had enough relationships to know we had something special. Does that mean in the years we were together he didn’t feel attracted to another woman?

There are many kinds of relationships. We just need to be open to enjoy them for what they are. It sounds like a pretty obvious statement but the truth is people are complicated and we often have expectations.

But expectations keep us from living and enjoying certain relationships, because we want them to be something else than what they are. If we can learn to live in the present and enjoy people and our connections as they happen and as they are, we would have more fun in our lives.

Sometimes relationships are just intellectual. And that is just what they are. But we can have wonderful conversations if we don’t keep hoping and expecting them to be something else.

Sometimes relationships are just sexual. And that is great. Feeling sexual and sharing it with someone else can be a good experience if we don’t get frustrated and angry hoping it can be different.

And sometimes we have those relationships where most everything falls into place. And it is heaven.

In every situation we have to ask ourselves: can I deal with this? Am I okay if that is all I get from this experience. Once we can answer yes, then that the key becomes not to force the relationship to be everything to us.

Sometimes connections are in our paths to fulfill some want or desire we are feeling. Taking things for what they are and letting them run their course is a mature and smart way to live life.

I love the slogan “Just do it”. Because if you want to make a change; just do it. The how is what can become the issue. So here are a few things to consider when you decide to make a change:

1 – Tell people you trust about your decision. Once it’s out there we feel more responsible to follow through. Plus our friends and/or family will keep us in check.

2 – Have a plan. If you want to lose weight, set up a plan. If you want to stop smoking, set up a plan. In these cases a plan can be a schedule to stick by, and actions to be taken such as: read food labels, weigh food, avoid sugar etc. And if you want to be happier, you still need a plan like: not to indulge in negativity, to busy yourself every time you get depressed, to do something pleasurable every day etc.

3 – Realize that only you can make the change. Waiting for others to change things for us, just keeps us right where we are. No one can rescue anyone. If we don’t love ourselves and are waiting for someone to love us so we can feel whole, it will never happen. If we are waiting for someone to strategize how to get the perfect job; that will never happen. We need to be responsible for our own lives. If we want to live differently and/or better it is up to us.

4 – Don’t give up and don’t expect immediate results. Just because we decided to change something it doesn’t mean the results will happen right after we declared to the world that we are in the process of changing. Be diligent and be reasonable and don’t give up.

5 – Be okay in being off balance. We are creatures of habit. When we decide to change something about us or our lives, every cell in our bodies wants to scream: “What the hell is going on here?” When you feel that way, realize it is part of the change and breath through the anxiety and discomfort.